I really hope it is just me, or does anyone really dislike the lack of a human voice when doing business with people ?
I will explain my frustration, i have now contacted customer service three times, twice through the help function and once via direct email, although polite were the responses only selected parts of the mail were replied to with a complete avoidance of responding to the “how can i speak to someone ?” part of the message.
As a customer (or at least that’s how i hope us “punters” are perceived by open rent) I would like to speak with a representative of the company and if all worked well you would be expecting me to hand over between somewhere between £2000 and £4000 plus references to a
Alternatively i would like to at least be told straight up that voice communication is not in the business model of open rent and they will not provide this feature, this way I can take the decision to not use OpenRent and place my business with a provider that does offer voice Communications.
Even if its scope of voice communications was limited to just a “customer service only” basis, dealing with problems and complaints that would be such a step forward from the perceived avoidance of voice communication.
I agree. Having just completed a very painful transfer of an existing let into the OpenRent system, every time I called to discuss my problems, I was told someone would call back, but I just got emails that said “follow the process”.
I agree 100% and have complained about this many times this year. Our first time let as new landlords was great and very smooth but I needed guidance and got personalised advice every time I rang or Openrent team rang back. Second time round has been a rocky road and did I get that phone support? Absolutely not, other than one missed call saying they tried to call me back. From thinking Adam Hislop and team were brill I now think they are PANTS! Sorry but that’s my opinion. The idea of the Rent Now system is great but of course some of us are going to need some extra help and as they will hold on to my first month’s rent for up to 14 days again and no doubt be earning interest on that (and possibly the deposit for a short time too), the least they could do for their keep is speak to me in person when I need it!
Join the National Landlords Association !!! Dont forget Open rent will market the property to find you a tenant. They will be the first to say they are not total Law experts. The way to becme more knowledgeable is to join theNLA ,take their on line exam, become accredited, and attend their meetings . This is called professional developement.
Hi Melinda, I’m sorry to hear you’ve not had the experience you were expecting at the second time of using OpenRent to let your property.
One of the things I am trying to do – both with our guidance content and on the OpenRent Community – is make it much easier for new landlords to find all the info they need. If you weren’t able to get the answers you needed from OpenRent, I’d love to know what areas you struggled with so that I can make that better in future. Would you mind sharing that here or messaging me?
Regarding the 14 day holding period, I’m sure the Core Team will have mentioned this if you raised it with them, but it is an effective way of guarding against a very common genre of scams where people hire e.g. an Airbnb, conduct viewings with tenants, and then get them to pay the first month’s rent. When they show up to move in, they discover the property they viewed was actually an Airbnb all along and their first month’s rent has vanished.
Being able to protect tenants from scams like this is a big reason why so many tenants use OpenRent in the first place. As for the interest, if you had a deposit of £1,000, then I think the most interest anyone could earn from it in 14 days is around 80 pence!
If you run into difficulties using our service in future, I’d really recommend making a post here on the Community, since thousands of experienced OpenRent landlords now use it and are able to help, on top of our team replying, too.